Binary Drivers

Binary Drivers

[James Porter]

I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a bug in a
binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a closed
source driver and is up to said company to fix it.

For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from hardware
manufacturers. 

Just because nvidia makes a closed source driver doesn't mean that we can't also
create an open source driver(limited functionality, reverse engineered,
etc.,etc.). I firmly believe that the choice should be up to the user and/or
distro. I'm not a kernel dev, I don't know c...but I understand the concepts and
I should have the right to do what I want with this GPL code. Restricting me
only frustrates me. Should the default be open source, definitely; should binary
drivers be blocked from running on a linux kernel...certainly not.

I personally like nvidia's products, they have spent a lot of money in R&D. One
example is SLI, if their spec was open what would stop ATI from stealing their
work(patents?, gotta love those). Personally I think nvidia has excellent
support for linux, I have actually convinced people to use linux(desktop and
server) just by showing them beryl with the nvidia beta drivers.

Lastly I think it's ridiculous to create,diplay, and distribute "Free" as in
freedom and "Free" as in cost software only to later consider limiting my
freedom...want to know why a lot of large companies don't support
linux...exactly threads like this. Why make the effort to use "Free" software
only to have the rug pulled out from under you. This is what makes the BSDs so
attractive.

Re: Binary Drivers

[Alan]

> I personally like nvidia's products, they have spent a lot of money in R&D. One
> example is SLI, if their spec was open what would stop ATI from stealing their

3DFx invented SLI many years ago. The SLI programming information for the
3DFx cards is public. Nvidia are a bit late to the party except on the PR
front.

Alan

Re: Binary Drivers

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Dec 15 2006 21:59, Alan wrote:
>
>> I personally like nvidia's products, they have spent a lot of money in R&D. One
>> example is SLI, if their spec was open what would stop ATI from stealing their
>
>3DFx invented SLI many years ago. The SLI programming information for the
>3DFx cards is public. Nvidia are a bit late to the party except on the PR
>front.

...and there are enough people to take the PR. (Meaning they don't check
if "SLI" existed before and hence reveal foul PR.)


	-`J'
-- 

Re: Binary Drivers

[Alexey Dobriyan]

On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
> I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a bug in a
> binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a closed
> source driver and is up to said company to fix it.
>
> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from hardware
> manufacturers.

Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.

> Just because nvidia makes a closed source driver doesn't mean that we can't also
> create an open source driver(limited functionality, reverse engineered,
> etc.,etc.).

We can.

> I firmly believe that the choice should be up to the user and/or
> distro. I'm not a kernel dev, I don't know c...

but you can't.

> but I understand the concepts and
> I should have the right to do what I want with this GPL code.

You don't have a right to do what you want with GNU GPL'ed code.
Read the fucking license, already.

> Restricting me only frustrates me.

Nobody is restricting you.

> Should the default be open source, definitely; should binary
> drivers be blocked from running on a linux kernel...certainly not.

But users of binary drivers should be blocked from sending bug reports
to kernel developers.

> I personally like nvidia's products, they have spent a lot of money in R&D. One
> example is SLI, if their spec was open what would stop ATI from stealing their
> work(patents?, gotta love those).

I lost a nice quote about 10-20% of the community stopping making
excuses for vendors. Sad, sad, nice quote definitely.

> Personally I think nvidia has excellent
> support for linux, I have actually convinced people to use linux(desktop and
> server) just by showing them beryl with the nvidia beta drivers.

beryl on server?

> Lastly I think it's ridiculous to create,diplay, and distribute "Free" as in
> freedom and "Free" as in cost software only to later consider limiting my
> freedom...

Nobody is limiting you.

> want to know why a lot of large companies don't support
> linux...exactly threads like this.

You asked them?

> Why make the effort to use "Free" software
> only to have the rug pulled out from under you. This is what makes the BSDs so
> attractive.

So use BSD.

Re: Binary Drivers

[Tomas Carnecky]

Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
>> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from hardware
>> manufacturers.
> 
> Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.
> 

That's your personal opinion! A lot other people (including me) have had 
excellent experience with binary drivers!

>> Just because nvidia makes a closed source driver doesn't mean that we can't also
>> create an open source driver(limited functionality, reverse engineered,
>> etc.,etc.).
> 
> We can.
> 

The day you show me that the open-source driver is faster and more 
stable then the binary driver, I'll switch. But until then I'll stay 
with my binary driver. I haven't had any serious problems with it, in 
fact, I'm very happy, so why should I want to switch?

I don't see Linux in such a political way like some of you do, for me 
Linux is just like any other OS. There are good drivers and bad drivers. 
And I don't care if they are open source or binary, I don't judge them 
based on that, but based on how well they work and how good the support is.

> But users of binary drivers should be blocked from sending bug reports
> to kernel developers.
> 

Most end-users will never get directly in touch with the kernel 
developers. They'll first go to their distribution. Most Ubuntu users 
don't even know what a kernel is (not that I use Ubuntu, but it's a 
distribution that is widespread among the less experienced end-users and 
people who switch to Linux from the windows world).


tom

Re: Binary Drivers

[jdow]

From: "Alexey Dobriyan" <adobriyan@gmail.com>

> On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
>> I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a 
>> bug in a
>> binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a 
>> closed
>> source driver and is up to said company to fix it.
>>
>> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from 
>> hardware
>> manufacturers.
>
> Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.

So are the Linux drivers in some cases. My ATI Radeon Mobility video
in my laptop is an example.

If you are going to mount a sanctimonious high horse it is a wise idea
to mount a horse instead of a donkey.

{^_^} 

Re: Binary Drivers

[Dave Airlie]

On 12/16/06, jdow <jdow@earthlink.net> wrote:
> From: "Alexey Dobriyan" <adobriyan@gmail.com>
>
> > On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
> >> I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a
> >> bug in a
> >> binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a
> >> closed
> >> source driver and is up to said company to fix it.
> >>
> >> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from
> >> hardware
> >> manufacturers.
> >
> > Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.
>
> So are the Linux drivers in some cases. My ATI Radeon Mobility video
> in my laptop is an example.
>

Open drivers aren't magic.. if the vendor doesn't give us the
information how specific chips are screwed, there isn't anything we
can do about it, ATI don't support the open drivers for anything but
RN50s from Dell and their support is quite brutal even on those (every
patch is a dirty hack...), the thing is with the open drivers we can
say hey ATI that is a dirty hack, with the closed ones they just stick
it in and ship it..

Dave.

Re: Binary Drivers

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a bug in a
> binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a closed
> source driver and is up to said company to fix it.

ANd deal with users screaming at you 'I'm sure nvidia is not a problem
because it dies when I use suspend, but is rock solid otherwise'?

> Just because nvidia makes a closed source driver doesn't mean that we can't also
> create an open source driver(limited functionality, reverse engineered,
> etc.,etc.). I firmly believe that the choice should be up to the user and/or
> distro. I'm not a kernel dev, I don't know c...but I understand the concepts and

So you can't write code...

> work(patents?, gotta love those). Personally I think nvidia has excellent
> support for linux, I have actually convinced people to use linux(desktop and
> server) just by showing them beryl with the nvidia beta drivers.

...still you convince people to use code noone is going to fix? Sweet!

							Pavel
-- 
Thanks for all the (sleeping) penguins.

Horses and donkeys [Re: Binary Drivers]

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> >Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. 
> >Learn it by heart.
> 
> So are the Linux drivers in some cases. My ATI Radeon 
> Mobility video
> in my laptop is an example.
> 
> If you are going to mount a sanctimonious high horse it 
> is a wise idea
> to mount a horse instead of a donkey.

High horses are common and easy to ride. But a donkey... :-).
[Searching for donkey to ride somewhere near Prague. Also searching
for donkey stallion, preferably tall one -- have high horse and want
some donkey-horse foals.]

							Pavel
-- 
Thanks for all the (sleeping) penguins.

Re: Binary Drivers

[Marek Wawrzyczny]

Dear Linux Kernel ML,

I am writing as a Linux-only user of over 2 years to express my concern with 
the recent proposal to block out closed source modules from the kernel.

While, I understand and share your sentiments over open source software and 
drivers. I fear however, that trying to steamroll the industry into 
developing open source drivers by banning closed source drivers is going to 
have a completely different result. They will simply abandon Linux support 
for some of their products altogether.

Take the high-end graphic cards that are prevalent in most of today's 
home/SOHO hardware- desktops and laptops. Would I be wrong in saying that the 
Linux market share in this market is no more than 5%?
These companies have already demonstrated that the support they provide is 
proportional to the market share.

The open source driver development is promising but it has been mentioned 
several times that the project is undermanned and the vendors are not 
forthcoming with the necessary information.
My hardware as it stands today is still not working with the open-source 
drivers. Perhaps this is the case of PEBCAK and not the open-source drivers 
per se but with a 1-4 hour turnaround to test a new version of the r300 
driver it is not a small effort on my part. Still, I'm eagerly awaiting the 
day that I'll be able to use an open-source driver that is on par with the 
ati one.

The bottom line is that the proposed 1st Jan 2008 dead line is unlikely to 
make any corporations tremble. It is likely to be the day when I will be no 
longer able to run the latest version of the kernel.

Finally, I'd like to thank you for reading my email and on your work on the 
fantastic work and community that Linux is.
I hope you will take this user and others like me under consideration when 
making the final decision on whether or not to include the proposed patch and 
whether to undertake work on code that will prevent binary drivers from 
loading.

Warmest regards,

Marek Wawrzyczny

Re: Binary Drivers

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Dec 16 2006 01:57, Tomas Carnecky wrote:
> Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
>> > For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from
>> > hardware
>> > manufacturers.
>> 
>> Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.
>
> That's your personal opinion! A lot other people (including me) have had
> excellent experience with binary drivers!

Either way.

 *  NVIDIA blob on a desktop box

    Ability to deadlock the machine, proved so in the past, but
    has not happened >= 1.0.7xxx so far.


 *  Free "radeon" driver on a laptop

    The _second_ time (relative to starting the X binary) I switch
    from Xorg 6.x to the console, the screen fades from black to
    white. System remains operational, switching back to X gives me
    my graphics mode back, but no way to go back to console.



	-`J'
-- 

Re: Horses and donkeys [Re: Binary Drivers]

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Dec 16 2006 08:12, Pavel Machek wrote:
>> 
>> If you are going to mount a sanctimonious high horse it 
>> is a wise idea
>> to mount a horse instead of a donkey.
>
>High horses are common and easy to ride. But a donkey... :-).

The next thing that happens is that nvidia and ati
undermine us a Trojan Rabbit.


	-`J'
-- 

Re: Binary Drivers

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
> > but I understand the concepts and
> > I should have the right to do what I want with this GPL code.
> 
> You don't have a right to do what you want with GNU GPL'ed code.
> Read the fucking license, already.

Actually, the license doesn't restrict your rights.
Copryight law restricts your rights. The license grants you additional rights
not granted by copyright law.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: Binary Drivers

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Saturday 16 December 2006 10:07, Marek Wawrzyczny wrote:
> The open source driver development is promising but it has been mentioned 
> several times that the project is undermanned and the vendors are not 
> forthcoming with the necessary information.
> My hardware as it stands today is still not working with the open-source 
> drivers. Perhaps this is the case of PEBCAK and not the open-source drivers 
> per se but with a 1-4 hour turnaround to test a new version of the r300 
> driver it is not a small effort on my part. Still, I'm eagerly awaiting the 
> day that I'll be able to use an open-source driver that is on par with the 
> ati one.

I buy the hardware. I actually want to get enough information about it
so that I can write a driver for it for my homegrown OS.

In the "old days" hardware was accompanied with such info.
For example, printers had control ESC sequences listed, etc.

These days, printers come with elaborate idiot-proof manuals
"how to properly connect your printer to the AC outlet"
and "how to properly insert Windows driver CD".

Ever met those Windows-only "GDI" printers which do not speak
any known open standard (they eat proprietary bitmap input instead)?

Why vendor has a right to restrict me to a few existing OSes?

I think that something is wrong here. Are there countries where
such practuce (of not providing tech info for writing drivers)
is illegal?
--
vda

Re: Binary Drivers

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Fri, 2006-12-15 at 21:20 +0000, James Porter wrote:
> I think some kernel developers take to much responsibility, is there a bug in a
> binary driver? Send it upstream and explain to the user that it's a closed

Plaese name them. AFAICS if there is a response, it is similar to "your
kernel is tainted, please report the report elsewhere".

> source driver and is up to said company to fix it.
> 
> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from hardware
> manufacturers. 

You are probably not looking at the right places.

> Just because nvidia makes a closed source driver doesn't mean that we can't also

^^
Please send patches.

> create an open source driver(limited functionality, reverse engineered,
> etc.,etc.). I firmly believe that the choice should be up to the user and/or
> distro. I'm not a kernel dev, I don't know c...but I understand the concepts and
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^
Then become one if you are serious with the "we" above.

> I should have the right to do what I want with this GPL code. Restricting me

Then you should discuss this with law makers, politicians and the
various pressure groups about copyright and/or authors rights and you
surely *must* deal beforehand with the patent plague since this is even
more restricting in any sense than author rights ever was (let alone
copyright).
And for such  political debate LKML is probably not a good place.

> only frustrates me. Should the default be open source, definitely; should binary
> drivers be blocked from running on a linux kernel...certainly not.

They are not blocked - it is up to the users to decide and live with the
consequences.

[...]
> only to have the rug pulled out from under you. This is what makes the BSDs so
> attractive.

Why are you then here?

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Binary Drivers

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:59:43PM +0000, Alan wrote:
> 3DFx invented SLI many years ago. The SLI programming information for the
> 3DFx cards is public. Nvidia are a bit late to the party except on the PR
> front.

Well they do work differently.  3Dfx just did alternate line rendering,
while nvidia does a lot more methods of dividing the work load (many of
which are likely to be more efficient than alternate line rendering in
general).  No doubt why they picked the name SLI though.  They did also
buy out 3Dfx so I guess by that they can claim to have "invented" it. :)

--
Len Sorensen

Re: Binary Drivers

[Eric W. Biederman]

Tomas Carnecky <tom@dbservice.com> writes:

> Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:20:58PM +0000, James Porter wrote:
>>> For what it's worth, I don't see any problem with binary drivers from
> hardware
>>> manufacturers.
>>
>> Binary drivers from hardware manufacturers are crap. Learn it by heart.
>>
>
> That's your personal opinion! A lot other people (including me) have had
> excellent experience with binary drivers!

Almost all software is crap.  Binary drivers are just unreviewed unfixable
crap.  Things don't get better if you encourage crap.

The practical problem with simple testing for detecting problems is that
you don't frequently test the corner cases, and corner cases are what
developers often get wrong, often make software a security hazard, and
are often what developers spend most of their time building
infrastructure for so that we can get the corner cases right.

One such corner case that causes me to run in fear of binary only
kernel drivers are times when drivers accidentally write to variables
used for something else.  Which can cause failure somewhere else
someplace a long time after it has happened.  Like driving over a
tack in the road and having your tire go flat 1000 miles later because
of a slow leak.

These are the kinds of problems you have to address if you want
everyone to have a good experience with their hardware.  These are
precisely the kinds of problems that cannot be addressed with
binary only drivers.


We have a process that has worked for centuries to improve our
knowledge base.  The scientific method and peer review.  We use a
variation of this proven process for writing software in linux.  The
binary only vendors are being rude and refusing to participate. 

Do you understand why we have no sympathy for their efforts, no desire
to make their lives easier.

In general people doing binary only drivers are being rude.

> The day you show me that the open-source driver is faster and more stable then
> the binary driver, I'll switch. But until then I'll stay with my binary
> driver. I haven't had any serious problems with it, in fact, I'm very happy, so
> why should I want to switch?

Oh.  So you have had problems with it.   The goal for system software
is quality so high you can not find problems with it.  That doesn't
always happen but we try.  The fact you have minor problems indicates
there are problems in the driver, and which probably means that
it is indeed crap.

Anytime an end user has to be aware of drivers and not the problem
at hand it is a problem.

> I don't see Linux in such a political way like some of you do, for me Linux is
> just like any other OS. There are good drivers and bad drivers. And I don't care
> if they are open source or binary, I don't judge them based on that, but based
> on how well they work and how good the support is.

A very reasonable attitude.  But a binary driver is an automatic
negative on the support side.  It fundamentally reduces the number and
quality of the people who can support you.  The developers are not
being cooperative with other developers so the system as a whole
cannot improve to support it better.


Eric

Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Hannu Savolainen]

Marek Wawrzyczny wrote:
> Dear Linux Kernel ML,
>
> I am writing as a Linux-only user of over 2 years to express my concern with 
> the recent proposal to block out closed source modules from the kernel.
>
> While, I understand and share your sentiments over open source software and 
> drivers. I fear however, that trying to steamroll the industry into 
> developing open source drivers by banning closed source drivers is going to 
> have a completely different result. They will simply abandon Linux support 
> for some of their products altogether.
>   
As a developer of some "closed source" drivers I can confirm that this 
is exactly the case. I would never consider open sourcing my work just 
because somebody is pointing pistol to my neck. I would leave the whole 
IT business and start doing something else rather than accept this kind 
of mafia-like negotiation methods.

For a professional developer of any software the decision of open 
sourcing it is not easy. "Just for fun" developers have no problems 
because they don't expect to be able to live on their work anyway. 
However a professional developer can release software under GPL only if 
it's considered invaluable or if there is some way to guarantee 
sufficient income. Releasing something under GPL without a guaranteed 
backup plan is like jumping from an airplane without parasuit. If 
somebody forces me to jump form an airplane without a parasuit then what 
would this be called?

> The bottom line is that the proposed 1st Jan 2008 dead line is unlikely to 
> make any corporations tremble. It is likely to be the day when I will be no 
> longer able to run the latest version of the kernel.
To us this decision would mean that after Jan 1 2008 we will be out of 
business (at least in the Linux market). Due to the nature of our 
product (kernel level sound API) there is no alternative way to get USB 
working. We could try to develop an alternative API that is user land 
based but this is not going to work. We could also develop an artifical 
user land driver that would require application->kernel->deamon->kernel 
type looping which kills performance and causes massive latencies but it 
doesn't make any sense.

Our alternatives are to leave the Linux market or to release our code 
under GPL. GPLing means that we will have to give to the major Linux 
companies full rights to do whatever they like with our code. They will 
have complete freedom to adapt our product for their purposes and to 
sell it for profit. There is no law that would require them to pay 
anything to us. There is also no way we could compete with them because 
the current device/module model makes it completely impossible to ship 
precompiled binary modules for all possible kernel 
distributions/versions. At this moment only the companies controlling 
the Linux distributions can sell binary drivers.

Developers contributing their software to Linux kernel have full right 
to decide if other kernel code using their work is derived or not. 
However is it not fair that developers of some key subsystem like USB 
use this right? There is no alternative USB subsystem that the others 
could use. Of course we could take the earlier USB subsystem before the 
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL change and ship it together with our software. However 
is this going to work or is it benefit of anybody? No.

Using EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is fair to protect code such as checksum or 
encryption/decryption algorithms is fair. Developers of independent 
kernel modules can use their own code. But the USB subsystem is 
different case because there is no alternative.

Isn't it somehow suspicious if this kind of decisions are made by 
employees of companies that develop a product which directly competes 
with ours. Maybe this is the way how the free Linux community works.

I would suggest the Linux kernel developer community should write down 
some rules the developers should agree _before_ they contribute anything 
to the kernel. It's not good to anybody that different developers can 
set different rules for the usage of their code. In particular it's not 
good that anybody can put additional restrictions to 
subsystems/interfaces that have been freely usable for years. The rest 
of the IT industry can then examine the rules and decide if there is any 
idea in investing on Linux based products.

Best regards,

Hannu

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Jesper Juhl]

On 18/12/06, Hannu Savolainen <hannu@opensound.com> wrote:
> Marek Wawrzyczny wrote:
> > Dear Linux Kernel ML,
> >
> > I am writing as a Linux-only user of over 2 years to express my concern with
> > the recent proposal to block out closed source modules from the kernel.
> >
> > While, I understand and share your sentiments over open source software and
> > drivers. I fear however, that trying to steamroll the industry into
> > developing open source drivers by banning closed source drivers is going to
> > have a completely different result. They will simply abandon Linux support
> > for some of their products altogether.
> >
> As a developer of some "closed source" drivers I can confirm that this
> is exactly the case. I would never consider open sourcing my work just
> because somebody is pointing pistol to my neck. I would leave the whole
> IT business and start doing something else rather than accept this kind
> of mafia-like negotiation methods.
>

Why is this dead horse still kicking?
Linus already spoke on this issue (
http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/13/370 ,
http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/218 ) and Greg KH already withdrew his
patch ( http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63 ), so could we please just
let this dead horse rest in peace?

-- 
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>
Don't top-post  http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html
Plain text mails only, please      http://www.expita.com/nomime.html

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:34:53 +0200, Hannu Savolainen wrote:

> For a professional developer of any software the decision of open 
> sourcing it is not easy. "Just for fun" developers have no problems 
> because they don't expect to be able to live on their work anyway. 
> However a professional developer can release software under GPL only if 
> it's considered invaluable or if there is some way to guarantee 
> sufficient income. Releasing something under GPL without a guaranteed 
> backup plan is like jumping from an airplane without parasuit.

Except that we're talking about *hardware* companies here, not
*software* companies. *Hardware* companies make money by selling
*hardware*, not the software that drives it: in fact, they always
distribute the 'software' they write (the drivers) for free (gratis).

So while what you say is perfectly sensible for *software* developers,
it has absolutely nothing to do with the closed source drivers
*hardware* companies distribute.

This all being said, I think that the only thing that can shake
companies such as nVidia and ATI is a project such as the Open
Graphics Card
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics
to succeed.

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Hic manebimus optime

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Casey Schaufler]

--- Giuseppe Bilotta <bilotta78@hotpop.com> wrote:


> Except that we're talking about *hardware* companies
> here, not
> *software* companies. *Hardware* companies make
> money by selling
> *hardware*, not the software that drives it: in
> fact, they always
> distribute the 'software' they write (the drivers)
> for free (gratis).
> 
> So while what you say is perfectly sensible for
> *software* developers,
> it has absolutely nothing to do with the closed
> source drivers
> *hardware* companies distribute.

The argument that a hardware company usually
invokes is that, while they don't give a horse's
pitute about the software itself, they do care
about the information the software contains
about their hardware. The concern is that
publishing the software under any form of open
or free license would be seen as publishing
the details of the hardware, thus making any
claims that they attempted to protect thier
intellectual property void. They would sell
less hardware because they would have no legal
recourse against anyone who "stole" the secrets
to their hardware.

I make no claims to understanding the legal
basis for this position. I don't even know if
I think it makes sense. I have heard it often
enough to understand that many people believe
it though.


Casey Schaufler
casey@schaufler-ca.com

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 16:38 -0800, Casey Schaufler wrote:
[...]
> The argument that a hardware company usually
> invokes is that, while they don't give a horse's
> pitute about the software itself, they do care
> about the information the software contains
> about their hardware. The concern is that
> publishing the software under any form of open
> or free license would be seen as publishing
> the details of the hardware, thus making any
> claims that they attempted to protect thier
> intellectual property void. They would sell
> less hardware because they would have no legal
> recourse against anyone who "stole" the secrets
> to their hardware.

The more realistic and more expensive threat is not the above (yes, one
can "copy" an already released product after reverse enginnering  and
also try to sell it but how long - in calendar time - does this take?
And during that time the original is sold all the time) but it is much
easier to detect (real or potential) patent violations and the fun
begins probably.
And ATM is is practically not possible to build anything remotely
"technical" without violating hundreds of patents somewhere (they may be
legal or "illegal" or trivial or software as such but if a patent is
granted it is there).

> I make no claims to understanding the legal
> basis for this position. I don't even know if
> I think it makes sense. I have heard it often
> enough to understand that many people believe
> it though.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Binary Drivers

[Scott Preece]

On 12/18/06, Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>
> We have a process that has worked for centuries to improve our
> knowledge base.  The scientific method and peer review.  We use a
> variation of this proven process for writing software in linux.  The
> binary only vendors are being rude and refusing to participate.
>
> Do you understand why we have no sympathy for their efforts, no desire
> to make their lives easier.
>
> In general people doing binary only drivers are being rude.
---

Which is more rude:
(a) "Thank you for requesting a driver to support our hardware on
Linux. Unfortunately, we don't have time either to provide such a
driver or write the documentation that would allow you do so. The
Linux market is not big enough to justify the work, and as a result we
cannot offer you any support.", or

(b) "Thank you for requesting a driver to support our hardware on
Linux. Unfortunately, we don't have time either to provide such a
driver or write the documentation that would allow you do so. The
Linux market is not big enough to justify the legal and technical
expense involved. However, we can provide you with this binary driver
that we believe will allow you to use the hardware in your system,
just as we provide binary drivers for other hardware platforms."

You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
wrong...

scott

scott

Re: Binary Drivers

[Erik Mouw]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 10:33:10AM -0600, Scott Preece wrote:
> (b) "Thank you for requesting a driver to support our hardware on
> Linux. Unfortunately, we don't have time either to provide such a
> driver or write the documentation that would allow you do so. The
> Linux market is not big enough to justify the legal and technical
> expense involved. However, we can provide you with this binary driver
> that we believe will allow you to use the hardware in your system,
> just as we provide binary drivers for other hardware platforms."

You forgot to add:

"However, we thought the legal and technical expense involved in
 writing this binary driver and possibly violating the Linux kernel
 copyright was well spend."

My 0.02 EUR.


Erik

-- 
+-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 --
| Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:06:43 +0100, Giuseppe Bilotta said:

> So while what you say is perfectly sensible for *software* developers,
> it has absolutely nothing to do with the closed source drivers
> *hardware* companies distribute.

The problem is that the software drivers reveal an awful lot about the
innards of the hardware, which is something the hardware companies *do*
want to protect.

> This all being said, I think that the only thing that can shake
> companies such as nVidia and ATI is a project such as the Open
> Graphics Card

At least nVidia *does* actually Get It, they just don't have a choice in
implementing it, because all their current hardware includes patents that
they licensed from other companies (I believe some of the OpenGL stuff that
originated at SGI and got bought by Microsoft is involved, but I have no
hard references for actual patent numbers).  And then they have the big
problem - do they keep using the patent in order to boost performance,
or no?

If they produce a blazing-fast card and they manage to sell to 30% of the
Windows users, they've sold to about 27% of all computer users.  If they
skip the patent and produce a slower card to please the Linux users, even if
they sell to half the Linux users, that's only 5-6% of the market.

Which course of action is any CFO going to choose?

(And let's not underestimate the possibility that some yet-undisclosed
submarine patent will torpedo the Open Graphics Card if they unwittingly
re-invent something owned by a company that wants the card to fail....)

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Re: Binary Drivers

[Tomas Carnecky]

Erik Mouw wrote:
> 
> "However, we thought the legal and technical expense involved in
>  writing this binary driver and possibly violating the Linux kernel
>  copyright was well spend."
> 

So Microsoft is right, the legal status of Linux software _is_ unclear. 
You just gave them every reason to continue their campaign against 
Linux. <Don't use Linux, its legal status is unclear, you may get sued>.

The problem is, nobody wants to decide what to do with closed source 
software in Linux. I don't care how you decide, for or against binary 
drivers (well, actually I do but my opinion doesn't matter), just decide 
already!

tom

Re: Binary Drivers

[Tomas Carnecky]

James Porter wrote:
> I'm pretty sure Linus has decided, basically he said the patches to 
> prevent non-gpl binary drivers are not going into his tree unless every 
> other tree adopts it. Of course the few supporting won't get off their 
> high horse and try it on a different tree.

.. unfortunately, that doesn't make the legal status any clearer.

tom

Re: Binary Drivers

[Eric W. Biederman]

"Scott Preece" <sepreece@gmail.com> writes:

> Which is more rude:
> (a) "Thank you for requesting a driver to support our hardware on
> Linux. Unfortunately, we don't have time either to provide such a
> driver or write the documentation that would allow you do so. The
> Linux market is not big enough to justify the work, and as a result we
> cannot offer you any support.", or
>
> (b) "Thank you for requesting a driver to support our hardware on
> Linux. Unfortunately, we don't have time either to provide such a
> driver or write the documentation that would allow you do so. The
> Linux market is not big enough to justify the legal and technical
> expense involved. However, we can provide you with this binary driver
> that we believe will allow you to use the hardware in your system,
> just as we provide binary drivers for other hardware platforms."

But as it happens that driver does not work for a large segment
percentage of linux users who potentially could place the card in
their system.  Did that driver support all 23 architectures?

> You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
> you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
> market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
> wrong...

Every market is different, and you have to different things in
different markets.  It is close to incompetent not to acknowledge
the fact that rules are different in different markets and different
places.  That is one of the reasons why people try to harmonize laws
so there is not too much of this going on.

Usually it is also the case that binary vs source release does nothing
to a hardware manufacturers business model they sell hardware after
all, and usually having a helping hand in writing the necessary
software and making it work (the source release) is a plus for the
hardware manufacturer.

The difference is that we don't expect the hardware manufactures to do
anything we only hope they will support linux.  Once they support
linux we do expect they will play well with others and if they don't
then it is rude.

Please none of this amoral Neither is wrong crap.

Eric

Re: Binary Drivers

[Eric W. Biederman]

Tomas Carnecky <tom@dbservice.com> writes:

> The problem is, nobody wants to decide what to do with closed source software in
> Linux. I don't care how you decide, for or against binary drivers (well,
> actually I do but my opinion doesn't matter), just decide already!

The decision from Linus was simple.  Linus will not merge a patch that
attempts to prevent this from at a technical level.  No one has made
any exceptions to the GPL to say that GPL incompatible drivers are
allowed.  Therefore on a legal level kernel drivers with GPL
incompatible drivers are as illegal as the derivative works clause in
copyright law will allow us to make them.  If you want something
firmer you can go talk to your appropriate government about taking the
fuzz out of what is a derivative work. 

As a practical matter people not releasing source aren't playing well with us 
so we are not likely to play well with them.

Eric

RE: Binary Drivers

[David Schwartz]

> You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
> you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
> market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
> wrong...

Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product and then
not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually selling them the
physical product but selling them a way to get a particular thing done, then
don't represent that you're selling them physical product because that would
presumably include the right to use it any way they wanted provided it was
lawful.

How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
oil changes anyway?

If you sell a physical product, you should also include the information
necessary to make that physical product *work*. If you don't, you aren't
actually selling the physical product, that is, the person is buying a right
to use that physical product some particular way and not the product itself.

The law may come around on this issue. It has definitely done so on
companies that claim to be selling you cellphones but then later claim that
you need to pay them additional money if you want the access code to unlock
it and make it work with another carrier. If you own a physical phone, it
should come with the right to use it with any carrier it can be made to work
with, and a company with no ownership interest in the phone has no right to
withhold the information needed to make it do that so as to force you to use
their service.

The same applies when you buy a graphics card and don't want to use it with
the manufacturer's drivers. If it's *your* graphics card, the manufacturer
has no legitimate interest in forcing you to use their drivers by
withholding information about what *you* bought.

DS

RE: Binary Drivers

[David Lang]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, David Schwartz wrote:

>> You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
>> you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
>> market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
>> wrong...
>
> Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product and then
> not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually selling them the
> physical product but selling them a way to get a particular thing done, then
> don't represent that you're selling them physical product because that would
> presumably include the right to use it any way they wanted provided it was
> lawful.
>
> How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
> manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
> oil changes anyway?

there are cars out there where the owner cannot change or add transmission fluid 
(I had a rental car spring a leak and found this out the hard way)

some people like this, some don't. vote with your money

David Lang

Re: Binary Drivers

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:50:00 PST, David Schwartz said:
> How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
> manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
> oil changes anyway?

I know of at least one use case where a car *has* to have the doors welded
shut - stock car racing.  And there's requirements regarding how the hood
is fastened as well...

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Re: Binary Drivers

[Scott Preece]

On 12/21/06, Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
> "Scott Preece" <sepreece@gmail.com> writes:
>
> But as it happens that driver does not work for a large segment
> percentage of linux users who potentially could place the card in
> their system.  Did that driver support all 23 architectures?
---

Do they claim it does? There is NO moral obligation that they support
every piece of hardware in the world. They are offering a product
under certain terms. You can choose to buy it or not. If you have
standing, and believe that their driver infringes the Linux
copyrights, then you could also sue, but the most you could hope to
win is making the driver unavailable, which makes the hardware
unavailable. That still feels like a Pyrrhic victory to me.

---
> The difference is that we don't expect the hardware manufactures to do
> anything we only hope they will support linux.  Once they support
> linux we do expect they will play well with others and if they don't
> then it is rude.
---
Not everyone agrees that it is better to not have the device available
for Linux at all than to have it with a closed driver. Again, note
that the manufacturer services all other OS platforms with closed
drivers, so you're asking them to do something different, that
probably costs them something in startup cost, and potentially costs
them something in downstream support.

---
>
> Please none of this amoral Neither is wrong crap.
---

It's not a moral question. The hardware vendor says - "This is what we
make. You can buy it if you like and we will support it to the extent
defined in our support policy. If those terms don't work for you, or
it doesn't work with your hardware, then we're sorry; we can't help
you at this time."

scott

Re: Binary Drivers

[Scott Preece]

On 12/21/06, David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
>
> > You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
> > you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
> > market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
> > wrong...
>
> Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product and then
> not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually selling them the
> physical product but selling them a way to get a particular thing done, then
> don't represent that you're selling them physical product because that would
> presumably include the right to use it any way they wanted provided it was
> lawful.
>
> How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
> manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
> oil changes anyway?
---

But there is no legal or moral obligation for the carmake to sell you
the service manual for the vehicle or provide you with their periodic
service bulletins...

---
>
> If you sell a physical product, you should also include the information
> necessary to make that physical product *work*. If you don't, you aren't
> actually selling the physical product, that is, the person is buying a right
> to use that physical product some particular way and not the product itself.
---

The information needed to make it work does not necessarily include
any information about how it works. A closed driver is a perfectly
valid part of the product.

Try this thought experiment: suppose the "driver" were actually
implemented by firmware loaded into the device in the factory and not
field replaceable. Do you consider that to be immoral? Why should the
technological accident of the driver being plugged into the OS change
the appropriateness?

---
>
> The law may come around on this issue. It has definitely done so on
> companies that claim to be selling you cellphones but then later claim that
> you need to pay them additional money if you want the access code to unlock
> it and make it work with another carrier. If you own a physical phone, it
> should come with the right to use it with any carrier it can be made to work
> with, and a company with no ownership interest in the phone has no right to
> withhold the information needed to make it do that so as to force you to use
> their service.
---

No such change has occurred. There was a very limited legal change to
say that it did not violate copyright to attempt to circumvent the
protection of the lock. There is no legal requirement that the carrier
unlock the device (at least in the US). [I personally believe that
they should be required to, but I'm only responding to your assertion
that there has been a major change on this point.]

---
> The same applies when you buy a graphics card and don't want to use it with
> the manufacturer's drivers. If it's *your* graphics card, the manufacturer
> has no legitimate interest in forcing you to use their drivers by
> withholding information about what *you* bought.
---

I disagree. The manufacturer has a right to choose to sell its devices
under any legal business model. Part of that model is deciding what
level of support to provide and what systems to support in selling it.
It's not a question of whether they "have a legitimate interest in "
doing anything - they have the complete right to choose where to spend
their development dollars. Choosing not to write technical manuals for
the public is a completely valid choice. It's your option whether to
buy or not, knowing the manufacturer's choice.

scott

Re: Binary Drivers

[Dave Neuer]

On 12/21/06, Tomas Carnecky <tom@dbservice.com> wrote:
> James Porter wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure Linus has decided, basically he said the patches to
> > prevent non-gpl binary drivers are not going into his tree unless every
> > other tree adopts it. Of course the few supporting won't get off their
> > high horse and try it on a different tree.
>
> .. unfortunately, that doesn't make the legal status any clearer.

Well, FWIW, neither does some "decision" from the kernel authors; it
hinges on what is and what is not a derived work of the kernel, and
the only parties whose opinion matters here (the courts in the various
jurisdictions) haven't ruled on that yet, and won't until such time as
a copyright holder in the kernel sues someone for copyright
infringement.

Dave

Re: Binary Drivers

[Martin Mares]

Hello!

> I disagree. The manufacturer has a right to choose to sell its devices
> under any legal business model. Part of that model is deciding what
> level of support to provide and what systems to support in selling it.

At the very least, if they decide that they wish to provide a binary-only
driver for i386, then their claims that they support Linux (without telling
that they in fact support a single specific variant of Linux) are
(a) blatant lie, and (b) false advertising.

				Have a nice fortnight
-- 
Martin `MJ' Mares                          <mj@ucw.cz>   http://mj.ucw.cz/   
Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep., Earth
COBOL -- Compiles Only Because Of Luck

Re: Binary Drivers

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:12:57 CST, Scott Preece said:
> On 12/21/06, David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

> > How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
> > manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
> > oil changes anyway?
> ---
> 
> But there is no legal or moral obligation for the carmake to sell you
> the service manual for the vehicle or provide you with their periodic
> service bulletins...

As a matter of fact, at least in the US, the carmakers *do* have to supply
relevant information for emissions-control systems to alll repair shops:

42 U.S.C. § 7521(m)(5)

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00007521----000-.html

Efforts to vastly expand that have been surfacing every Congressional session
for the last few years.  The most recent incarnation:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2048


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Re: Binary Drivers

[Wolfgang Draxinger]

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Am Donnerstag, 21. Dezember 2006 21:50 schrieb David Schwartz:

> Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product
> and then not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually
> selling them the physical product but selling them a way to get a
> particular thing done, then don't represent that you're selling
> them physical product because that would presumably include the
> right to use it any way they wanted provided it was lawful.

My opinion, too. I wasted months to get specifications for a 
particular HW once and I've heared them all:

* "We can't publish documentation due to 3rd party patents" (Unh, I 
thought, that patents are there, _that_ you can safely publish).

* "It would be expensive for us to publish documentation" (Wouldn't 
that save the in house development of drivers, the kernel developers 
would that for you _and_ maintain it).

* "We've lost the documentation" (Aaahaaa, lame excuse)

And sometimes they are honest: "We don't want to publish". If it is 
rare, special hardware, like measurement interfaces I found out, that 
you can put a lot of pressure on them, if you return them their 
hardware, and claim your money back telling them the reason, why 
their product is inapropriate. If they don't accept that, sue them 
for fraud (you expected a working product, but it doesn't work with 
your system). But most of the time they fear to loose one of their 
precious customers and get quite talkative. But in the consumer 
market a margin of +/-0.5M users doesn't put force on vendors selling 
~10M units, so not buying is not an option.

Personally I've given up to tell HW manufators directly. Instead I 
tell people what to buy and what not and to send protest letters the 
hardware vendors - hey for something that registration cards coming 
with the product must be good for.

On the long term I think, that the only way to force hardware vendors 
to publish all documentation is by going the legislative way, i.e. 
getting politically active, with the goal being a law, that anyone, 
selling a product _must_ provide detailed documentation for free, 
that enable one to understand use and maintain the product and it's 
individual components without requiring additional restricted 
information from the manufactor.
Anything else creates a maintenance and support monopoly for the 
manufactor, which distorts the free market.

IMHO hardware documentation disclosure is of uttermost importance, 
since if the manufactor goes out of buisnes you mostly have some bad 
luck.

2 years ago I bought on eBay a small DECT PCI adapter with the 
intention to connect it with Asterisk someday - knowing that there 
are no Linux drivers and that the manufactor got bankrupt and was 
bought by a competitor. I didn't even got replies to my documentation 
requests addressed at the new owner of the IP. Quite disappointing. 
At least the driver CD contains also VxD drivers, which are quite 
easy to reverse engineer, but I haven't yet found the time to do so.

BTW: Does anybody know a not too expensive way to have some silicon 
created from a VHDL? Eventually it would be easier to design our own 
hardware, than being dependent on some manufactor. But there are 
plenty of quite trivial patents, like this one, making you "aaarghh":
<http://tinyurl.com/yl4d2n>

But I think, that Linux can also add some force on the manufactors if 
we want a little bit: Already Linux is a vital component in many 
operations. For example Hollywood: There are virtually none rendering 
farms running not under Linux, there, a few MacOS X, a few Solaris 
and a few Irix. The same goes for the workstations. Now give Linux 
another 2 years to diffuse into widespread market. I'm quite sure, 
that within the next year a lot of users will look for alternative 
OS, when their Windows Vista refuses to reactivate, once they changed 
their hardware for the 2nd time. WinXP support is said to be 
cancelled a lot earlier. People still have their hardware then, not 
wanting to invest into a Mac, just to get a good OS. Instead they 
will remeber that free Knoppix/Kanotix/Ubuntu LiveCD, wich came with 
their computing magazine and that they tried out, found it nice but 
didn't migrate fearing the effort. But the isntalled OS refuses to 
work, demanding reactivation and that LiveCD is a comfortable way to 
continue work. Then they install it, and at some point HW manufactors 
_must_ provide Linux drivers. It doesn't matter if they are OSS yet. 
Just let them deliver and gain Linux a not neglectible consumer 
market share. Then forbid CSS drivers in the kernel, not aprupt, but 
with enough migration time. Hardware manufactors will have to 
disclose information, if they don't want to loose customers. But 
since the migration is done smoothly customers will experience their 
systems failing - due to the older CSS only drivers. But HW vendors 
are forced to open the spec for new products, to that the drivers are 
not illegal and may be delivered with the product/integrated into the 
kernel. Without working drivers the product is worthless and people 
using Linux won't buy a product not supported. It's a pervasive long 
time plan, but it might work - if Microsoft plays along and keeps 
it's user gaging restrictions.

This is purely politics, I know, but unfortunately this is probably 
the only way to get it done. Marketeers and attornerys are technical 
illiterates numb to technical argumentation. I don't like it, but it 
seems, that we've to adopt some of their methods...

Wolfgang Draxinger

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Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Erik Mouw]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 01:16:15PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> At least nVidia *does* actually Get It, they just don't have a choice in
> implementing it, because all their current hardware includes patents that
> they licensed from other companies (I believe some of the OpenGL stuff that
> originated at SGI and got bought by Microsoft is involved, but I have no
> hard references for actual patent numbers).  And then they have the big
> problem - do they keep using the patent in order to boost performance,
> or no?

Wasn't the whole idea about patents that you publish your invention?


Erik

-- 
+-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 --
| Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands

Re: Binary Drivers

[Horst H. von Brand]

David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

[...]

> Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product and then
> not tell them how to make it work.

Right. And the driver *is* the "information to make it work", in a
convenient package.

[...]

> How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
> manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
> oil changes anyway?

If people don't do this, what sense does it make to tell them how to do it
anyway?
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile               Fax:  +56 32 2797513

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:59:21 +0100, Erik Mouw said:
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 01:16:15PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> > At least nVidia *does* actually Get It, they just don't have a choice in
> > implementing it, because all their current hardware includes patents that
> > they licensed from other companies (I believe some of the OpenGL stuff that
> > originated at SGI and got bought by Microsoft is involved, but I have no
> > hard references for actual patent numbers).  And then they have the big
> > problem - do they keep using the patent in order to boost performance,
> > or no?
> 
> Wasn't the whole idea about patents that you publish your invention?

(Argh - I was too busy coming down with the flu to carefully read what I
wrote, and as a result I was a tad less that totally specific and accurate.
Hopefully I get it closer to right this time. ;)

Patent licenses are also a good place to hang all sorts of side agreements on -
and I'm pretty sure that the *actual* intellectual property involved is a
witches' brew of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets, all wrapped up with a
nice "thou shalt not disclose *any* of it" wrapper.

In any case, there isn't much that *any* company can do to open-source
something when they've got any sort of legally binding NDA attached to
3rd-party intellectual property.  At best, they can design an entirely
new product that totally avoids the IP in question - but as I noted last
time, the company *does* have to do a sanity check when 90% of the market
doesn't care in the slightest.


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Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 12:59 +0100, Erik Mouw wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 01:16:15PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> > At least nVidia *does* actually Get It, they just don't have a choice in
> > implementing it, because all their current hardware includes patents that
> > they licensed from other companies (I believe some of the OpenGL stuff that
> > originated at SGI and got bought by Microsoft is involved, but I have no
> > hard references for actual patent numbers).  And then they have the big
> > problem - do they keep using the patent in order to boost performance,
> > or no?
> 
> Wasn't the whole idea about patents that you publish your invention?

Of course.
But it is much better for the patent-interested parties if it wouldn't
be necessary (and said parties are actually complaining about the "must
publish" thing).
And the times are long gone when a patent was actually "publishing".
They use since ages there own secret language so
- the patent system as such doen not enforce "publisching" (except you
  are one of speakers of "patent quak").
- that even the most trivial idea looks like it is very complicated.
- that even an already implemented idean looks like it is very new.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Trent Waddington]

> > On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 01:16:15PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> > > At least nVidia *does* actually Get It, they just don't have a choice in
> > > implementing it, because all their current hardware includes patents that
> > > they licensed from other companies

What makes you think they "get it"?

In a recent interview
(http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2006/07/bsdtalk054-interview-with-andy-ritger.html)
the nvidia developer had this to say:

"Quite honestly we have a lot of ip sorrounding both our hardware and
our software. And so the driver we provide is binary only, ya know, to
protect that intellectual property. You know, I guess, on a software
side, so much of what we do, err, of the code that comprises that
drivers is common and leveraged across all the operating systems and I
think that is a big benefit. You know we are able to accomplish a lot
with a fairly small, err, unix specific engineering team because we're
able to leverage so much common code. Ya know, that really is a big
win for us and our users, and so, ya know, we provide a binary only
driver to protect that ip. Umm, that said, we do try to, ya know,
provide source for, err, ya know, for things when it makes sense and
its possible to do so. I guess for our various unix graphics drivers,
the interface between *cough* excuse me, the core of the binary, err
the core of the kernel module is operating system neutral .. is
shipped binary only but anything that, ya know, interacts directly
with, with unix kernel, be it linux or freebsd or whatever, we provide
the source code to that interface layer. Similarly, err, I guess, up
in user space, umm, you know, we were talking either about, umm, the
nvida X extension and our control panel nvidia-settings. The source
code for that is provided as GPL. We provide a command line tool
nvidia-xconfig for manipulating your xconfiguration files. We provide
that as GPL. So we do try to provide source code to those sorts of
utilities and things like that when it makes sense. Umm, but the core
of our driver, we only provide as binary."

Yeah, really sounds like he "gets it".

Why don't you release source?  To protect the intellectual property.
Well, duh!  That's why everyone holds back source.  So allow me to
translate..

Why don't you release source?  Because we don't believe in freedom, we
don't "get it" and we don't want you to have it.

That wasn't some marketting stooge they were interviewing either, it
was two of the guys who work on the unix porting team for the nvidia
drivers.

They don't get it.

Trent

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Alan]

> Why don't you release source?  To protect the intellectual property.
> Well, duh!  That's why everyone holds back source.  So allow me to
> translate..

That IP story is for the most part not even credible. If they were worried
about "software IP" they would release hardware docs and let us get on
with writing drivers that may well not be as cool as theirs but would
work. If they had real IPR in their hardware then they would hold patents
on it and would be able to take action against (or license it) to anyone
else making hardware. That would apply even outside the USA where
software patents are generally not valid.

The only hardware IP they'd need to protect would appear to be anything
that revealed they used other people's IPR without permission or
licenses. Given the Nvidia/3Dfx affair I can see why they would be
worried about that given it cost them $70M and 1 million shares.

Alan

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 17:09:43 GMT, Alan said:

> That IP story is for the most part not even credible. If they were worried
> about "software IP" they would release hardware docs and let us get on
> with writing drivers that may well not be as cool as theirs but would
> work. If they had real IPR in their hardware then they would hold patents
> on it and would be able to take action against (or license it) to anyone
> else making hardware. That would apply even outside the USA where
> software patents are generally not valid.
> 
> The only hardware IP they'd need to protect would appear to be anything
> that revealed they used other people's IPR without permission or
> licenses. Given the Nvidia/3Dfx affair I can see why they would be
> worried about that given it cost them $70M and 1 million shares.

Hey, I started out *up front* pointing out they can't open-source the
drivers because some of the IP is other people's, didn't I? :)

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Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1113 bytes --]

On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:03:27 +1000, Trent Waddington said:
> Why don't you release source?  To protect the intellectual property.
> Well, duh!  That's why everyone holds back source.  So allow me to
> translate..
> 
> Why don't you release source?  Because we don't believe in freedom, we
> don't "get it" and we don't want you to have it.

There's believing in freedom, and there's wanting to be able to ship code
without getting sued...

The binary blob in question is several megabytes in size.  Now, even
totally *ignoring* who knowingly licensed/stole/whatever IP from who,
that *still* leaves the problem of trying to write several megabytes of
code that doesn't infringe on anybody's IP - particularly some of those
vague submarine patents that should have been killed on "prior art" or
"obviousness" grounds.

So tell me - how *do* you release that much code without worrying about IP
issues?

Remember - somebody *can* "get it" but be unable to actually *deploy*.
I *get* the whole global warming thing - but I'm not in a position to buy
a hybrid car unless somebody else kicks in US$15K or $20K or so.


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Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Weinehall]

On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 11:04:49PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:03:27 +1000, Trent Waddington said:
> > Why don't you release source?  To protect the intellectual property.
> > Well, duh!  That's why everyone holds back source.  So allow me to
> > translate..
> > 
> > Why don't you release source?  Because we don't believe in freedom, we
> > don't "get it" and we don't want you to have it.
> 
> There's believing in freedom, and there's wanting to be able to ship code
> without getting sued...
> 
> The binary blob in question is several megabytes in size.  Now, even
> totally *ignoring* who knowingly licensed/stole/whatever IP from who,
> that *still* leaves the problem of trying to write several megabytes of
> code that doesn't infringe on anybody's IP - particularly some of those
> vague submarine patents that should have been killed on "prior art" or
> "obviousness" grounds.

You know, not releasing source code doesn't  make "IP" violations
magically disappear, so if anything you should be more suspicious about
closed source drivers infringing others patents than anything.

> So tell me - how *do* you release that much code without worrying about IP
> issues?

If you have to worry about "IP", you're screwed no matter if you release
source or not.  The only problem is that it might be trickier for the
other party to prove.  The only case where a closed source driver makes
some kind of sense from an "IP" point of view is when you're trying to
protect your own code (or code you have licensed).

> Remember - somebody *can* "get it" but be unable to actually *deploy*.
> I *get* the whole global warming thing - but I'm not in a position to buy
> a hybrid car unless somebody else kicks in US$15K or $20K or so.

Well, you can always make a contribution by using public transportation
or switching to low energy light bulbs.  Every little thing counts =)


Regards: David
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Trent Waddington]

On 1/2/07, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
> The binary blob in question is several megabytes in size.  Now, even
> totally *ignoring* who knowingly licensed/stole/whatever IP from who,
> that *still* leaves the problem of trying to write several megabytes of
> code that doesn't infringe on anybody's IP - particularly some of those
> vague submarine patents that should have been killed on "prior art" or
> "obviousness" grounds.
>
> So tell me - how *do* you release that much code without worrying about IP
> issues?

I'm going to try really hard to ignore how flammable your response
is.. I guess I deserve it.

I think you're repeating a myth that has become a common part of
hacker lore in recent years.  It's caused by how little we know about
software patents.  The myth is that if you release source code which
violates someone's patent that is somehow worse than if you release
binaries that violate someone's patent.  This is clearly, obviously,
false.  If you're practising the invention without a license in your
source code then you're practising the invention without a license in
binaries compiled from that source code.  Period.

Nvidia are not releasing source code to their drivers for one reason:
it's not their culture.  They don't see the need.  They don't see the
benefit.

Trent

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 16:30 +1000, Trent Waddington wrote:
[...]
> I think you're repeating a myth that has become a common part of
> hacker lore in recent years.  It's caused by how little we know about
> software patents.  The myth is that if you release source code which
> violates someone's patent that is somehow worse than if you release
> binaries that violate someone's patent.  This is clearly, obviously,
> false.  If you're practising the invention without a license in your
> source code then you're practising the invention without a license in
> binaries compiled from that source code.  Period.

While this is true (at last in theory), there is one difference in
practice: It is *much* easier to prove a/the patent violation if you
have (original?) source code than to reverse engineer the assembler dump
of the compiled code and prove the patent violation far enough to get to
a so-called "agreement" on the costs.

> Nvidia are not releasing source code to their drivers for one reason:
> it's not their culture.  They don't see the need.  They don't see the
> benefit.

Which also may well be true.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Alan]

> I think you're repeating a myth that has become a common part of
> hacker lore in recent years.  It's caused by how little we know about
> software patents.  The myth is that if you release source code which
> violates someone's patent that is somehow worse than if you release
> binaries that violate someone's patent.  This is clearly, obviously,
> false.  If you're practising the invention without a license in your
> source code then you're practising the invention without a license in
> binaries compiled from that source code.  Period.

You are forgetting the 11th commandment - thou shalt not get caught.
Most software patents (actually quite probably most patents) are held by
people who don't have the skills to go disassembling megabytes of code in
search of offenders.

Alan

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Trent Waddington]

On 1/2/07, Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at> wrote:
> While this is true (at last in theory), there is one difference in
> practice: It is *much* easier to prove a/the patent violation if you
> have (original?) source code than to reverse engineer the assembler dump
> of the compiled code and prove the patent violation far enough to get to
> a so-called "agreement" on the costs.

On 1/2/07, Alan <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> You are forgetting the 11th commandment - thou shalt not get caught.
> Most software patents (actually quite probably most patents) are held by
> people who don't have the skills to go disassembling megabytes of code in
> search of offenders.

The list of features which the driver supports is going to be
sufficient evidence for 99% of patents that relate to computer
graphics hardware.

Regardless, in the *millions* of dollars that it costs to prosecute a
patent violation case I think they can find a few grand to throw at a
disassembler jockey.

So I'll take back what I said.. it does make some difference whether
you release patent violating source code or patent violating binaries.
 It makes about a 1% difference to the overall cost of prosecuting a
patent lawsuit.

Now if you are done speculating why nvidia might have a reasonable
reason for not releasing source code, can we just take it as read that
the most likely reason is that they simply don't want to because they
don't see the benefit?   If that's the case, what benefit can we offer
them?

Trent

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 21:26 +1000, Trent Waddington wrote:
> On 1/2/07, Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at> wrote:
> > While this is true (at last in theory), there is one difference in
> > practice: It is *much* easier to prove a/the patent violation if you
> > have (original?) source code than to reverse engineer the assembler dump
> > of the compiled code and prove the patent violation far enough to get to
> > a so-called "agreement" on the costs.
> 
> On 1/2/07, Alan <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> > You are forgetting the 11th commandment - thou shalt not get caught.
> > Most software patents (actually quite probably most patents) are held by
> > people who don't have the skills to go disassembling megabytes of code in
> > search of offenders.
> 
> The list of features which the driver supports is going to be
> sufficient evidence for 99% of patents that relate to computer
> graphics hardware.
>
> Regardless, in the *millions* of dollars that it costs to prosecute a
> patent violation case I think they can find a few grand to throw at a
> disassembler jockey.

Most of the cases (more or less "almost all" AFAIK) are handled/closed
without really going to court (since it is cheaper for all - especially
if the alleged patent violator is substantially smaller than the patent
holder and will not survive the law suit. See it as "protection money").
So there are no real statistics available on this issue.
I don't know about others but I wouldn't write an offer with a fixed
price for "look into assembler dumps, reverse engineer it and find an
infringement on a list of given patents" so the patent holder has to
list the patents and the amount of my time to invest (and then he will
get a price for it and no guarantees of success).
Thus the patent holder takes the whole risk that I don't find anything
useful (independent of the presence of a patent violation or my
inability to find/identify it).
And you need people wo are literate in "patent quak" and the technical
side so it will IMHP not work if you get someone not very expensive[0].

> So I'll take back what I said.. it does make some difference whether
> you release patent violating source code or patent violating binaries.
>  It makes about a 1% difference to the overall cost of prosecuting a
> patent lawsuit.

Given the above, the difference (measured in money/effort/....) is in
IMHO much larger than 1%.

> Now if you are done speculating why nvidia might have a reasonable
> reason for not releasing source code, can we just take it as read that
> the most likely reason is that they simply don't want to because they
> don't see the benefit?   If that's the case, what benefit can we offer
> them?

I don't know.
For network cards it helped to recommend hardware with open drivers. In
the graphic card department this didn't worked up to now.

	Bernd

[0]: That doesn't imply that hiring someone expensive guarantees
success.
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 09:26:14PM +1000, Trent Waddington wrote:
> The list of features which the driver supports is going to be
> sufficient evidence for 99% of patents that relate to computer
> graphics hardware.

Nope, not necessarily.  Recall that Patent Office has issued a patent
on the concept of using "XOR" in graphics operations (for dealing with
a cursor that's moving around).  There are plenty of patents involving
optimizations that can't be proven unless you have access to the
low-level source code or are willing to spend a huge amount of money
disassembling megabytes of binaries.  In fact, there are rumors
floating around that pthe reason why no one is willing to release
source code is that both sides are almost certainly violating each
other's trivial patents, and defending against a patent lawsuit can
take years, millions of dollars, and even if the patent is completely
and totally bogus, can put a company out of business.  Witness what
happened with Research in Motion and the patents allegedly covering
the Blackberry.  Even though the USPTO had already provisionally ruled
that there was prior art (the patent troll still had appeals to file),
the judge wasn't willing to wait for the USPTO process to finish, and
was prepared to issue a ruling that would put a 23 BILLION dollar
company out of business.  So RIMM ended up paying over half a billion
dollars of blackmail money to settle a patent lawsuit where the
patents may end up getting ruled completely bogus a year or two from
now anyway.

In any case, the rumor that was going around was that the reasn why
neither side is willing to release sources is because whoever did
would be committing potential corporate suicide first....

I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies often
feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the country that
has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who spill hot coffee
in their lap and my favorite, to an idiot who lifted up a lawnmover to
trim their hedges, dropped the lawnmover on his foot and lost his foot
as a result.  The lawn mover company had to pay $$$ because they
hadn't thought to put in a idiot switch to stop the lawnmower blade
from spinning when it was lifted off the ground....

						- Ted

P.S.  The opinions expressed in this e-mail are completely my own; I'm
not important enough to decide the corporate position of my employer.  :-)

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:

> I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> spill hot coffee in their lap ...

MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
you're welcome to read the details here:

  http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
complexion of this story thoroughly:

1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
*scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and

2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.

  yes, the american system of justice is brain-damaged.  but it's time
to find another example to use as the evidence, ok?

rday

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Weinehall]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> 
> MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> you're welcome to read the details here:
> 
>   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
> 
> as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> complexion of this story thoroughly:
> 
> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and

That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.

No, the customers continued to prove to be total morons by total
ignorance of the fact that coffee *is* hot when fresh.  If they
cannot handle hot coffee, they can order ice coffee or ask for a refill
of their cola.

[snip]


Regards: David
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Jens Axboe]

On Tue, Jan 02 2007, David Weinehall wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > 
> > > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> > 
> > MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> > lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> > guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> > you're welcome to read the details here:
> > 
> >   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
> > 
> > as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> > complexion of this story thoroughly:
> > 
> > 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> > *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> > will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

I guess selling sharp kitchen knifes in the US is a law suit waiting to
happen as well then, people could seriously hurt themselves with those
things!  Talk about corporate irresponsibility.

-- 
Jens Axboe

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[James Simmons]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 1378 bytes --]


> > > > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > > > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > > > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > > > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > > > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> > > 
> > > MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> > > lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> > > guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> > > you're welcome to read the details here:
> > > 
> > >   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
> > > 
> > > as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> > > complexion of this story thoroughly:
> > > 
> > > 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> > > *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> > > will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> > 
> > That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> > people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?
> 
> I guess selling sharp kitchen knifes in the US is a law suit waiting to
> happen as well then, people could seriously hurt themselves with those
> things!  Talk about corporate irresponsibility.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Jan Engelhardt]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 1341 bytes --]


On Jan 2 2007 16:15, David Weinehall wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
>> 
>> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
>> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
>> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
>
>That's less than 90°C.
[1]

>Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
>people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

Boil or not - I've done a test some years ago with some friend
arguing about what the best temperature for tea is. Result of an
experiment involving actual temperature sensors: my default tea is 40
deg celsius. Theirs was about 60. And to note, drinking 60 deg water
already starts to scald my tongue slightly so that it 'itches' for a
while. So nothing[1] is unreasonable.

>> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
>> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
>> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
>
>No, the customers continued to prove to be total morons by total
>ignorance of the fact that coffee *is* hot when fresh.  If they
>cannot handle hot coffee, they can order ice coffee or ask for a
>refill of their cola.

Reminds me of http://qdb.us/4753


	-`J'
-- 

[OT] Hot coffee (was: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers))

[Steven Rostedt]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 08:22 -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> 
> MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> you're welcome to read the details here:
> 
>   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

Thanks for the pointer.

"The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages.  This amount
was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at
fault in the spill.  The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in
punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee
sales."

Although the punitive damages was later brought down to $480,000 (still
extreme for the case) it wasn't just the law suit that caused the
uproar. It was the $2.7 million that was (initially) rewarded. And for
what? Spilling hot substance on your lap.  I highly doubt that this
would have been big news if the reward was just the $200,000. Since
that's not really a life changing reward now a days.  But there's too
much "sue for the money" attitude in the US that the $2.7 mill got
people upset.

> 
> as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> complexion of this story thoroughly:
> 
> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.

I'll admit that I burnt myself while driving and drinking McD's coffee,
but I never even thought about complaining about it.

> 
>   yes, the american system of justice is brain-damaged.  but it's time
> to find another example to use as the evidence, ok?

OK, I like Ted's example of the lawnmower :) 

Well, the coffee one has gotten world news, and is just the "poster boy"
for the frivolous lawsuits that are done in America.  A while back I met
a guy and he told me that he was working on his motorcycle, and disabled
the breaks. Someone came by and stole the bike when he went in his house
to get some tools. The thief crashed the bike (totaling it) and received
some major injuries. Then the thief sued the guy because of the faulty
breaks!  He was in the middle of the case when I met him, so I don't
know how it ended. But the fact that this wasn't laughed out of court
just shows that the US system is screwed up.

-- Steve

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Horst H. von Brand]

Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at> wrote:

[...]

> I don't know about others but I wouldn't write an offer with a fixed
> price for "look into assembler dumps, reverse engineer it and find an
> infringement on a list of given patents" so the patent holder has to
> list the patents and the amount of my time to invest (and then he will
> get a price for it and no guarantees of success).

And them you'd have to testify (as an expert witness, AFAIU). Having
legally demostrable expertise in the area isn't easy, I suppose.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile               Fax:  +56 32 2797513

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=UTF-8, Size: 1105 bytes --]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, David Weinehall wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> > *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> > will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

Ah, many thanks for converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius!

> > 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> > had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> > mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.

Given the population size of Fahrenheit-country, 700 burns must be an
understatement...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

OT Coffee (was Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:30:17 +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven said:

> > > 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> > > had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> > > mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
> 
> Given the population size of Fahrenheit-country, 700 burns must be an
> understatement...

And keep in mind, that's not 700 burns.  That's 700 complaints that went far
enough that the lawyers were able to find documentation in McDonald's records.
The people who got burned and didn't complain, or just went in and gave the
manager an earful, aren't counted in that 700....

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Re: OT Coffee (was Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On 1/2/07, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:30:17 +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven said:
>
> > > > 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> > > > had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> > > > mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
> >
> > Given the population size of Fahrenheit-country, 700 burns must be an
> > understatement...
>
> And keep in mind, that's not 700 burns.  That's 700 complaints that went far
> enough that the lawyers were able to find documentation in McDonald's records.
> The people who got burned and didn't complain, or just went in and gave the
> manager an earful, aren't counted in that 700....
>

How many of them stuffed the cup between their legs though? I think it
she would have sqeezed the cup too hard and burned her hand and sued
McDonalds for that people would be more understainding...

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Weinehall]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 06:13:46PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> 
> On Jan 2 2007 16:15, David Weinehall wrote:
> >On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> >> 
> >> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> >> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> >> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> >
> >That's less than 90°C.
> [1]
> 
> >Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> >people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?
> 
> Boil or not - I've done a test some years ago with some friend
> arguing about what the best temperature for tea is. Result of an
> experiment involving actual temperature sensors: my default tea is 40
> deg celsius. Theirs was about 60. And to note, drinking 60 deg water
> already starts to scald my tongue slightly so that it 'itches' for a
> while. So nothing[1] is unreasonable.

For tea, you're not supposed to boil the water, only let it seethe, as
far as I know.  But yes, drinking scalding hot beverages is quite
stupid.  I'm not arguing against that.  But not realising that something
you need to at the very least seethe to prepare might be hot when served
is showing total ignorance.

> >> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> >> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> >> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
> >
> >No, the customers continued to prove to be total morons by total
> >ignorance of the fact that coffee *is* hot when fresh.  If they
> >cannot handle hot coffee, they can order ice coffee or ask for a
> >refill of their cola.
> 
> Reminds me of http://qdb.us/4753

Sounds quite reasonable.  Things have gone too far when there are
warnings about even the most obvious things.


Regards: David
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Neil Brown]

On Tuesday January 2, tao@acc.umu.se wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > 
> > > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> > 
> > MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> > lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> > guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> > you're welcome to read the details here:
> > 
> >   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
> > 
> > as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> > complexion of this story thoroughly:
> > 
> > 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> > *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> > will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

We have a coffee chain down here (.au) called "92degrees".  They claim this
is the optimal temperature for pumping the water through the ground
coffee beans to get ideal coffee.  So it doesn't need to be boiling.

Of course if people would just put milk in their coffee, we would have
this problem :-)

[We now return you to our regular program of filesystem corruption
and flame wars].

NeilBrown

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Randy Dunlap]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 08:11:21 +1100 Neil Brown wrote:

> Of course if people would just put milk in their coffee, we would have
> this problem :-)
> 
> [We now return you to our regular program of filesystem corruption
> and flame wars].

Yes, PLEEZE!

---
~Randy

RE: OT Coffee (was Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Schwartz]

> How many of them stuffed the cup between their legs though? I think it
> she would have sqeezed the cup too hard and burned her hand and sued
> McDonalds for that people would be more understainding...

How would what she did have any bearing on the key issue, which is whether
or not McDonald's was in any way negligent or serving a defective or
unreasonably dangerous product? This case should never have gotten past the
earliest stages, and numerous factually similar cases were properly
dismissed.

There is simply no way you can argue that McDonald's failed to warn people
about the risks. The cup says "hot" on it, and nobody can reasonably claim
they didn't know coffee was served hot. People might not realize that coffee
is hot enough to cause third-degree burns, but McDonald's can't include an
education with each cup of coffee, and the plaintiff's never suggest what
warning they think would have been appropriate. Any "failure to warn" type
argument is absurd on its face. (Does anyone honestly think anything would
change if McDonald's included some kind of notice on the cups?)

There is similarly no way you can argue that the product is unreasonably
dangerous or defective. McDonald's serves coffee at the temperature people
want their coffee served, well within industry standards. Hot coffee is
inherently dangerous, and asking McDonald's to make their coffee colder than
industry standards just to make it less dangerous is to argue that stores
should sell dull knives.

McDonald's serves coffee at the temperature consumers want it, within
accepted standards, that makes any danger inherent in that temperature
reasonable. There is no suggestion that the cups or lids are somehow
unsuitable. Any "defective product" or "unreasonably dangerous" argument is
absurd on its face.

What type of legal claim does this leave?

The claim that McDonald's settled "similar cases" and is thus being
arbitrary or trying to hide anything is nonsense. McDonald's, and other
coffee sellers, have settled cases where they *did* do something wrong, such
as failing to properly close the lid or where an employee actually dropped
or spilled the coffee on a customer.

The Stella Liebeck case, however, is a textbook example of a jury finding
for a plaintiff in a completely meritless case for no reason other than that
the defendant had deep pockets and the plaintiff was badly hurt. That there
is no plausible connection between anything the defendant did wrong and the
plaintiff's injuries was totally ignored. That none of the plaintiff's
claims had even one shred of legal merit was totally ignored.

What really amazes me though is that people continue to try to find some way
to justify this crazy case. That ATLA defends the case with a series of
confusing "almost sort of true" statements is embarassing.

DS

PS: In my previous post I made a few temperature conversion errors between
Farenheit and Celsius. All temperatures were correct in the first specified
units and the errors didn't affect the reasoning. My apologies, and thanks
to those who caught it.

Re: OT Coffee (was Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 324 bytes --]

On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:01:56 PST, David Schwartz said:
> There is simply no way you can argue that McDonald's failed to warn people
> about the risks. The cup says "hot" on it,

Actually, the "HOT" on the cup and the sticker in the drive-through that
says "Warning: Coffee is served very hot" were added after that lawsuit.

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Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 16:23 -0300, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at> wrote:
> [...]
> > I don't know about others but I wouldn't write an offer with a fixed
> > price for "look into assembler dumps, reverse engineer it and find an
> > infringement on a list of given patents" so the patent holder has to
> > list the patents and the amount of my time to invest (and then he will
> > get a price for it and no guarantees of success).
> 
> And them you'd have to testify (as an expert witness, AFAIU). Having

Probably if
-) I actually found something and
-) the patent holder also believes in it (and he will - IMHO very
probably - 
     pay another expert to verify the findings) and
-) the patent holder actually persues the infringements and
-) the law suit goes that far and.

> legally demostrable expertise in the area isn't easy, I suppose.

At least in .at you need some kind of "official approval" to become an
"expert in court" (in German: "Gutachter" - Is "assessor" the correct
translation? http://dict.leo.org/ lists 9 different words).
Actually this is a somewhat different job ....

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

RE: OT Coffee (was Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Schwartz]

> On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:01:56 PST, David Schwartz said:

> > There is simply no way you can argue that McDonald's failed to
> > warn people
> > about the risks. The cup says "hot" on it,

> Actually, the "HOT" on the cup and the sticker in the drive-through that
> says "Warning: Coffee is served very hot" were added after that lawsuit.

Yes. And pretty much everyone agrees that these warnings serve no purpose.
Everyone knows that hot coffee is served hot.

What people probably don't know is that if you spill hot coffee on yourself
and remain in contact with the coffee for more than about 45 seconds, a
third-degree burn can result.  This warning doesn't convey that information.

I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone is going to alter their
behavior in any significant way as a result of that warning.

DS

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:14:54 PST, David Schwartz said:
> 
> > The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.
> 
> Nonsense! 55C (100F) is ludicrously low for coffee.
> 
> 70C (125F) is the *minimum* recommended serving temperature. 165-190F is the

100F == 37C
125F == 52C

55C == 131F
70C == 158F

Yes, 100F *is* ludicrously low for coffee.  :)

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RE: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Schwartz]

> On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 12:14 -0800, David Schwartz wrote:
> > > The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.
> > 
> > Nonsense! 55C (100F) is ludicrously low for coffee.
> > 
> > 70C (125F) is the *minimum* recommended serving temperature. 
> 165-190F is the
> > preferred serving range. I can cite source after source for this. For
> > example:
> > http://www.bunn.com/pages/coffeebasics/cb6holding.html
> > http://www.millcreekcoffee.com/holding.htm
> 
> Do you actually read your citations? Your cited sources both give the
> SERVING temp as 155 - 175 F.

The conversion was incorrect. 70C is about 160F, and 55C is about 130F. As I said in the correction, every number is correct in the unit it was first posted in, and all the claims are correct.

160F is the mininum recommended serving temperature and 165-190F is the preferred range. 130F is a ludicrously low serving temperature for coffee. 180F seems to be about ideal.

Stella Liebeck's lawyers argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140F. This is no different from arguing that knives should be dull.

DS

RE: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Brian Beattie]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 12:14 -0800, David Schwartz wrote:
> > The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.
> 
> Nonsense! 55C (100F) is ludicrously low for coffee.
> 
> 70C (125F) is the *minimum* recommended serving temperature. 165-190F is the
> preferred serving range. I can cite source after source for this. For
> example:
> http://www.bunn.com/pages/coffeebasics/cb6holding.html
> http://www.millcreekcoffee.com/holding.htm

Do you actually read your citations? Your cited sources both give the
SERVING temp as 155 - 175 F.
-- 
Brian Beattie
Firmware Engineer
APCON, Inc.
BrianB@apcon.com

RE: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Schwartz]

> The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.

Nonsense! 55C (100F) is ludicrously low for coffee.

70C (125F) is the *minimum* recommended serving temperature. 165-190F is the
preferred serving range. I can cite source after source for this. For
example:
http://www.bunn.com/pages/coffeebasics/cb6holding.html
http://www.millcreekcoffee.com/holding.htm

Can we stop repeating a ridiculous myth? Coffee is supposed to be served
hot, very hot, hot enough to cause third-degree burns in seconds. Yes,
really.

Don't spill coffee on yourself or you could wind up in the hospital with
severe burns. This is a simple fact even if coffee is served at the ideal
serving temperature.

The fact that coffee is dangerous means that it is a virtual certainty that
dozens of people will be seriously burned by coffee every year. If this
scares or bothers you, don't drink coffee.

>1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
>*scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
>will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and

Right, 175 is the generally-recommended serving temperature and will also
produce third-degree burns almost immediately. Coffee served *anywhere*
inside the generally-accepted serving range will cause third degree burns
almost immediately. Consumer studies show that people generally like their
coffee more the hotter you serve it, with 190-200 degrees (the practical
maximum) consistently winning over lower temperature ranges.

Car manufacturers make cars that don't just go "fast" but *dangerously* fast
(100 to 120 MPH), a speed that can result in death almost immediately.

>2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
>had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
>mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.

Right, coffee is dangerous. It has always been and always will be if it's
served at the proper temperature. Thousands of people hurt themselves skiing
every year, yet the resorts stay open.

The danger of burns is inherent to the serving of hot beverages. If you
don't want to take that risk, don't order hot beverages.

How many people die each year in car accidents? Is this in any way evidence
that the car manufacturers are doing anything wrong?

>yes, the american system of justice is brain-damaged.  but it's time
>to find another example to use as the evidence, ok?

This is a *perfect* example. The tort system is meant to correct wrongdoing.
McDonald's served coffee at the temperature customers prefer it, in holders
that were perfectly suitable for beverages served at that temperature. The
justice system made them pay because someone was *hurt*, not because anyone
did something *wrong*.

http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/urban_legends_and_stella_liebe.html

DS

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[David Weinehall]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 07:44:24PM +0100, Bodo Eggert wrote:
> David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
> >> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> >> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> >> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> > 
> > That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do
> > people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?
> 
> The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.
> 
> >> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
> >> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
> >> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
> > 
> > No, the customers continued to prove to be total morons by total
> > ignorance of the fact that coffee *is* hot when fresh.
> 
> So everybody at McDrive should wait for five minutes to let it cool down.

Don't drink and drive just got another application =)


Regards: David
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Bodo Eggert]

David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>> 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
>> *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
>> will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do
> people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

The recommendet _serving_ temperature for coffe is 55 °C or below.

>> 2) there had, for a decade prior, been some *700* cases where people
>> had burned themselves with mcdonald's coffee, so it's not as if
>> mcdonald's was unaware of the danger, yet continued to ignore it.
> 
> No, the customers continued to prove to be total morons by total
> ignorance of the fact that coffee *is* hot when fresh.

So everybody at McDrive should wait for five minutes to let it cool down.
-- 
Ich danke GMX dafür, die Verwendung meiner Adressen mittels per SPF
verbreiteten Lügen zu sabotieren.

http://david.woodhou.se/why-not-spf.html